Is an officer in the US Army. His work has lately appeared in a number of venues, to include: The Wisconsin Academy Review, The 2River View, Dislocate, Good Foot, Snow Monkey, Abyss & Apex, Anemone Sidecar, Poetic Inhalation, and Chiaroscuro. His novelette "Cult of the Permanent Motorcycle" is available through <<FictionWise>>. Click on <<link>> for more information.

Room Clearing

I have made it a habit among enemies
To phrase this fluid strangelove in only
The pluperfect passive subjunctive;
Also, if they are particularly noisy,
I call myself we.

paratus
parati

In the Angle at Waterloo men stood
At odds with their nature, verses of
Quivering tension, humpbacks headless in the
Ranks as the fodder-shot sped trigonometrically
And wetly forth. For them, an aggression
Of ablative absolute.

tristia expulsa

But here, on the edge of the island,
A power projection platform unfolded
From nothing to nothing, you must
Know the single case in vogue, the sole
Significant war, a runic declension of

paro
paret

mene mene tekel upharsin

Mid-laugh, in the Magnus, I saw it on the ceiling.
There was no path through earth but honesty.
She had access to SIDPERS, knew and quizzed me
Before agreeing, that the establishment

And architecture of my days had moved to accept
The sound of the sea-resonant shell.

Nothing I complain about, mind you, but the witching
Air of her, so agreeable, and the swim of a world
Seen through the full fingers of merlot: they
Did not permit me that important thinkering.

I named my characters to the bare and quick.
I showed the keloid blue of my skin.
From Andrea to The Other, it all came away, you see,
Like a tale from Ovid,
And that is how the necessary lightness to hold

     An escarpment
     Of air

     The dark sure swelling of her

Laid around me.

In that confidence of empty and liquid
Speaking, I spoke an honesty of some other
Distant collaborative planning potential.

Smithy’s Jean Jacket

Today we rehearsed and performed an open scene.
Our issue-third ended as the strongest performer,
Carrying the committee of us and letting us play
The cupped capsule into and over its zygote emotion.

After it ended, I had the most remarkable sense
Of desconsing. The Other was an emptiness inside the vast.
You’ve seen it before bathing: a fleck of bubble
Towed in the luminous center of a larger soap.

For the following few performances, as I sat
Spectator to the spun wheat of the gels,
This vast was palpable to me; until --
At the very extreme, it lifted into weight and form.

We have not seen each other away from the stage
Long enough to realize the very ordinary
Residue of age that collects in the creases of our
Maps and Wranglers.

A Register of Deeds

Among the Arabic, between Braxton Bragg and Derek Walcott,
I had chanced a hand-written reminder to meet you at noon

Like we might square our jaws in the dusty center of the city
And draw metal against metal or flesh against flesh.

Elsewhere, a picture of you naked on the college couch;
A bas relief of melted wax, dripped but never scraped free

From the old cupboard closet, now a collection of socks and spare
Sheets; of course there is poetry too, but how very different

It feels to reread it out of context, to not feel but to
Measure only the devices. Are they all that is left of us --

An alliteration? A sylvan dactyl? I mixed them with the husks
Of the hickory nuts our son shelled and stood in my sweatshirt

Hoping

Where the smoke hung flat across the lawn,
Some obituary essence of it would register.


Copyright © 2004 Benjamin Buchholz

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